User:For7thGen/subpage 3
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I expect to place this in WP:Village Pump (Proposals) as Coexistence proposal, when I'm ready. Please feel free to contribute within the same spirit of coexistence. I may be able to accept constructive criticism as well.
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[edit] Introduction
I use WP = Wikipedia and eLink = external link for brevity and convenience.
Viewing background stuff as an appendix, I placed it "last", called Where I'm coming from.
Now I need a real appendix, which is really last, almost.
I'll eventually, perhaps in a year or two, place the appropriate parts of this in Bugzilla so WP software people can work on it. But first I'll have to ask for help in understanding the Bugzilla page. It looks like the SW people have purposely made their page obtuse in order to minimize the requests they get. But don't tell them I said that.
[edit] The problem
- (The problem background is below, Where I'm coming from.)
When I tried to learn from WP guidelines Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:Footnotes, I had a rough time. This is not what the WP community should inflict on its members! See my edits of both articles, trying to help myself in the future and others as well. It seems that, along with other divisions no doubt, there is a deep division between footnote-users and inline-eLink-users, because only one side can have automatic numbering of their referrings in any given article. See 1st proposal below. Once we have automatic numbering for both sides simultaneously, I think that both sides will be able to blissfully ignore each other while doing their own thing side by side, one side using their Footnotes section, the other using their References section, each welcoming the others to use theirs too whenever they wish to, appearing together in the same article. The true Wikipedia spirit!
Both of these WP guidelines, evidently because of this deep division, apparently were written to focus on automatic numbering and to intentionally omit the unnumbered alternatives:
- WP:Footnotes should handle non-numbered alternative footnotes available, but does not do so, nor does it point to any articles that do so, as examples. (It lists the needed templates but does not even mention that they can produce non-numbered footnotes.) The two template types which apply are {{ref labelJFK|a|a}} and {{ref harvard|JFK|footnote|a3}} as brief samples which then appear as [a] and (footnote). Both can be seen now at Golden Rule (ethics), "GR" article, a short (2 screens) article, and their coding can be seen of course.
- WP:Cite sources should handle non-numbered embedded HTML links or inline eLinks, but similarly does not do so, although it does point to an article that points to a third article Gymnopédie that actually does have several such eLink examples coexisting with numbered footnotes. Luckily Cite sources does actually use 2 non-numbered footnotes without calling attention to this (you see their backlinks in its References section). That is how I became aware of the possibility of unnumbered footnotes, shame on the article WP:Footnotes!
[edit] 1st proposal
I've worked in software for 8 years (1984-1992) or more, so I understand the area well enough to categorically state the following. We can make the computer do whatever we can even conceive of, within its speed and size limits, but it can take a tremendous amount of work to get the computer to do what we want. So the WP software infrastructure can be made to give both user camps the automatic numbering that they want and need, simultaneously in the same article.
Fact: Ordinary website owners with an HTML editor like my Netscape one for the Mac do automatically numbered footnotes simultaneously with non-numbered external links. (I assume they can't get automatically numbered eLinks, but I have no reason to check it even for this proposal.)
Fact: Our (WP's) underlying SW automatically numbers external links from the body of the article, the opposite of normal HTML behavior. According to WP:Footnotes we compile our WP code or markup to send our link-from-textbody-to-footnote out on the web as an external link (in order to get a number to be superscripted for the reader to click on). Such an external link is explicitly shown in Wikipedia:Footnotes#How does it work?. Clumsy and inefficient, right?
Spell out the proposal, the project: The current automatic numbering for footnotes is a superscript [2] etc.; and for inline eLinks it is an inline [2] followed immediately by a big arrow icon to indicate an external link. I think that's a big enough difference to allow readers to tell immediately which type of referring they're seeing. (If needed, one of the two could switch to capital letter numbering such as [B] in place of [2].)
The WP SW-infrastructure needs to be changed as follows:
- Make our SW compatible with the relevant HTML code which could then be added to our WP markup language, to provide automatically numbered footnotes in addition to its current autonumbering of eLinks. Or else
- Get the code from Nupedia or Magnus Manski as mentioned at Wikipedia:Footnotes#Disadvantages and future improvements, its second bullet. Or else
- Get volunteers who know the language our SW is written in (or willing to learn it). Just as our SW currently recognizes an external link and provides automatic numbering for it, our new SW needs to similarly recognize our footnote reference templates and provide the same automatic numbering for these footnote links when they are encountered in the body of the article.
And if we're going back to the SW drawing boards,let's also solve the notorious problem with multiple referencing of the same footnote (or source also), see Appendix: Autonumbering of multiple references below.
Noone else is forcing us to sit here in misery, quietly waiting for our SW people to straighten out our problems.
[edit] 2nd proposal
At present, we have to live in the present. Only one side (or none) can have its automatic numbering in any given article. So both sides need to treat the other side as they would like to be treated, and give up on their automatic numbering. In order to coexist, we have to give up our reason for existence? Well, actually our reason for existence in WP land is to help the reader. The reader is our bottom line, our guiding star that we hope we never neglect.
Yes, that's right, give up their automatic numbering. To demonstrate a good faith effort I have converted the above GR article to drop all automatic numbering. I'm not comfortable with the result, in my strong sympathy for the reader, but I'm too close to the topic to be able to tell. I'd like to see how readers like it. So please click there (above) and see how you like it.
Can we users and readers live with such articles until that Happy Day when simultaneous (automatic numbering returns)? Could any users with automatically numbered embedded HTML links in their articles convert one of their articles to non-numbered links so we can all see how it looks? Well, I've already seen it many times, I assume, and liked it very much, thank you. For example, the Gymnopedie article above in The problem section. Those links are mostly to uchicago.edu, my alma mater, very unlikely to become dead links. The remaining link I can't judge, and in my infinite spare time I suppose I could document it either in a footnote or in a new Reference section. In any case I believe in cutting a lot of slack for the other side, I'm just glad I've got them beside me, working in WP land. But see the incentives we can give them in the following proposal:
After all, by logic the reader no longer needs to worry about ...
to be continued from my scribbling
that I myself will not compete... I just want to be free to do my own thing, using unnumbered footnotes if need be. That the reader can see footnotes when they are needed, is all that matters, really. I do not want to be bothered about competing or anything else beside the topic at hand in any article I'm working on.
[edit] Where I'm coming from
From my user page you can get some of my background, including my name and thus that I'm male. I guess all of us unnamed ones are presumed to be male in WP-land. I suppose the impersonalness is really needed. I don't have to like it, I just have to live with it.
I do NOT have time for this altruistic (and very burdensome) work. I'm neglecting my own life and family terribly, at present. So in the future, you the WP community may not get any work out of me... Don't count on me. If I knew more Wikipedians like Friday, who seems to be a peacekeeper and an excellent human being by my standards, I'd be happier in the WP community.
How I got sucked into this unpleasant work: When I registered as a user, Friday greeted me in a friendly and helpful manner. I did a lot of work writing the golden rule article. This got me into a few Civil Rights articles because, being a reasonable responsible altruistic person, I thought those articles should contain the verified facts and that I should put the verification sources there rather than in my own article. Is that too indirect for anyone to follow? Anyway, I did it. And I learned how to revert a vandal's deletion of the article parts I wanted to work on, i.e., learned it with Friday's excellent help. And for all of this I needed to learn how verification sources are handled in WP land, see the above section The problem.
[edit] Appendix: Automatic numbering of multiple references
Drop current templates {{ref|JFK}} and its twin {{note|JFK}}, stated as specific examples; and for convenience and brevity rename our current template {{ref_label|JFK|2|b}} to become simply {{ref|JFK|2|b}}; and the same for its twin, obtaining {{note|JFK|2|b}}: both of which are just our current ref_label and note_label templates although simply renamed.
Written partly in SW parlance: At compile time our new WP software will need to parse these renamed templates as follows: When the computer sees (for example) {{ref|JFK|auto|auto}} for the first time, but the 6th different footnote, it needs to think, "this is the first time I've seen that footnote reference in the article body, I'll add JFK as the 6th row in my look-up table and enter 6 and none in its template, {{ref|JFK|6|none}}, and I'll make paired template {{note|JFK|auto|auto}} in the Footnotes section into {{note|JFK|6|none}}, in my executable code." This will produce the link [6] and the backlink ^ .
The identical same template pair will need to appear again for each additional reference to this same footnote, to provide its forward- and back-links:
When the computer later parses a 2nd reference to this same footnote {{ref|JFK|auto|auto}}, it thinks, "this is the second time so I'll make the template pair into {{ref|JFK|6b|6b}} and {{note|JFK|6b|6b}} in my executable code." This similarly will produce the link [6b] and the backlink 6b .
These templates will still allow users to put (almost) anything they choose into slots 3 and 4, for the link and backlink. If you look at the code for the above GR article you'll see that the code for the second reference to the JFK or a-th footnote appears as the pair {{ref label|JFK|a|a2}} and {{note label|JFK|a|a2}} , with both links hard-coded -- not changeable in the executable code. I could have hard-coded |1|a}} instead for the pair, to agree with the current system, or else |1|1b}} to agree with the proposed new SW system -- but I regard this as very dangerous, to mix up different systems, so I've deliberately inverted numbers and letters so the difference is obvious, i.e., this GR article is NOT the current system despite using the current system.
Currently, inline eLink users don't worry about multiple referencing of the same source, so nothing new needs to be added to the SW on their behalf, beyond the simultaneous auto numbering. Note however that the hard-coded {{ref harvard|JFK|2|a}} , for example would produce a link (2) at that point in the text, either currently or in the new system unless blocked somehow. Possibly the use of auto in slot 3 should be blocked somehow, but it's really up to the inline eLink users themselves, involving a judgment of whether the reader might confuse this link with the auto numberedinline eLink.
[edit] Footnote(s)
a The transition (back) to automatic numbering, for any article including the GR article that you just saw, will consist of removing numbering footnotes (the 5th or e-th footnote); placing the other footnotes in the footnote section back into their order of first appearance in the text, with # prefix replacing * prefix; modification of each footnote template; and probably removal of all notes to the reader in the footnote section.
Maybe someone else will put the omitted parts (see The problem above) into both of those WP guidelines.
